


By the Sea, By the Sea

by bethepuck



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Masturbation, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-03-02 20:22:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13325808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethepuck/pseuds/bethepuck
Summary: Leo is a fisherman in a small port town and Cris is the big superstar pro football player who returns home to get away from the big city.AKA the seaside AU that no one asked for and the one I've had no motivation to write lol





	1. A Storm on the Coast

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! So I haven’t written anything for the Cris/Leo fandom for a while so I might be a little rusty.... Like super rusty… But I do love this pairing (It might be my favorite of all time) and I thought of this fic a LONG while back and I absolutely LOVE IT but never had the motivation to write it… I honestly have no idea how this is gonna turn out and I’ve never done an AU like this before, but we’ll see how it goes and hope it isn’t a disaster. Let’s set up some basic info. Leo and Cris in the story are basically a few years younger than they are currently in real life (maybe mid-twenties/not-too-late-twenties). Just for background purposes, the town is very small and the people in it are SUPER gossipy. I think that the first part of this fic is prob gonna end up being super angsty bc Leo is dealing with some heavy stuff. Just for knowledge purposes, the rich people (basically madridistas… also Iker is in here too because screw you I miss him let’s pretend he didn’t leave….) live in town in fancy townhouses and the working class people (blaugranas) live just outside of town closer to the beach. I don’t know what time period this takes place in, but there’s very limited technology, like no one really uses cell phones because they basically don’t contact anyone outside of the town because they don’t like outsiders or whatever and cars and internet aren’t really a big thing either. This is like the most nostalgic, angsty thing I’ve ever written lol, so that’s great.
> 
> This first chapter is just background, hence why it’s primarily written in past tense, is super impersonal, and doesn’t delve into a lot of depth. Cris prob won’t show up for a few chapters, so hold tight. Also, there won’t be all that much dialogue in the first few chapters because Leo mostly avoids people and spends a lot of time by himself initially.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy!!

Leo lives in a small port town placed gently along the Spanish Coast where the Atlantic Ocean kisses the rocky, jagged and bruised shoreline and the sky and sea are always a welcoming, rich blue. The wisps of dune grass sway peacefully in the lazy afternoon hours, cooing a soundtrack for the cool evenings and the couples gazing out across their balconies like love could last forever, and the sun shines golden in the playful, autumnal warm breezes pouring off the beach. In the peak afternoon hours beneath a youthful orange sun, the air resonates with the sound of children laughing and playing on the beach, the bustle of voices and men at work on the docks, and the traffic of the town market before the midday heat escorts the very old and the very young indoors. Everyone knows everyone in this small village by the cerulean sea, the same generations growing up and growing out, but always staying put where the air is salty sweet and sailboats come in and out of the sun-bleached, scuffed docks, sails orange and yellow, green and blue, and every in between, inhaling the winds as though there were actually a place to go, a place outside of this one. Hidden by charcoal-colored, sharply inclining and declining cliffs and parched hills, few tourists venture forth to Leo’s sleepy, childhood town of Verano Eterno.

This is where Leo grew up, on the white sand and clear-water beaches, the only child of the town’s only fisherman, Jorge, and his beautiful wife, Celia. For years, Leo would sit by the algae-slick rocks, starfish and minnows betwixt the cracks, barnacles crusted to the sides, with knees scraped and scarred by the jagged edges and falling in the cracks one too many times for it to hurt anymore, watching the sailors tie their boats up to the sandwood dock under the scorching sunlight with thick, white ropes, bodies tanned and sun-kissed, the older men sagging in the heat with their dark, leathery skin, muscles and bones aching from years of hard tugging of sails and oars, teeth blinding white, always smiling and waving to Leo from afar with lively eyes that deceived their ages. The small waves the boats sent into ripples clipped playfully against the rough stones, as if to heal Leo’s wounds, or rather to coax him into another fall. His mother never liked it much when he played in the rocks; Celia Messi always knew those rocks held something dangerous in them.

Leo’s youth was sweet and pure. He played football on the bumpy cobblestone streets or on the hot sand with the other children from the village, laughing and squealing with delight as the tide rushed forward and splashed their ankles and shorts. The grains of sand burnt their feet, but they never stood still long enough to feel the pain. Piqué and Ney and Luis and Andrés raced him down the streets, swerving in and out of carts with striped awnings, calling out the names of the famous footballers that each believed he was, but Leo always won no matter whom he chose. Panting in the shade, dust-covered and rosy from the chase, Piqué would accuse him of cheating and demand a rematch, but Leo would only smile, quiet through his teeth, eyes warm and full beneath his unruly bangs.

On the weekends, there were picnics and birthday parties and food and music. The wealthier families in town would put on fireworks and sometimes set up old movies to play on the beach. Leo’s parents held close ties with these wealthy families, familiar with the old money names of Ramos, Rodríguez, Casillas, and many times, Leo, in his childhood, found himself at these events with the unfamiliar faces studying him with scrutiny. He didn’t feel he fit in with them much, though they were the friends and company of his father.

In his teenage years, his schooling ended, and his father taught him the trade, as was customary. There was never any question of moving out of the village and getting a college education, no reason to.

This is where Leo had spent his youth and this is where Leo stays, in this rocky ville by the sea, in the big white house that his parents passed onto him atop a cliff looking over the relentless churning ocean breaking on the crags, distanced away from town by a dirt road. The windows gazed forlornly out to the horizon, as though waiting for someone, Leo did not know who. Pictures in frames lined the wall, for Leo’s mother loved her camera. They crowded the walls, her photographs, all the way up to the high-arced ceilings, the late afternoon light filtering through and illuminating various portraits: Leo after losing his first tooth, Jorge sitting in the garden amongst the flowers, Leo asleep on the floor in front of the small, old TV absently streaming a football game, and so on and so forth.

After the school day had ended, the men trudged forth from the docks, backs sore with the weight of a family’s welfare, the women opened the windows to string laundry from the lines, shirts of white and blue billowing nostalgically above the town like home-made flags, and Leo would run home down the unpaved path to the little plot of land, tossing his bag down on the back porch to kick a football around in the little backyard and score on the painted rectangle goal against the ivy-covered brick wall as his mother made dinner in the kitchen with the windows open to let the breeze dance in, singing sweetly along to the songs she grew up with back in her own hometown in Argentina alongside the hum of the bees and the aroma of the herbs in the flowerbox by the sill.

Leo’s mother wasn’t originally from Verano Eterno, but moved there shortly after she fell in love with and married Jorge Messi. She was greeted by the town less than politely, especially the elite members that occupied the same social circle as her husband, and Jorge never really forgave them for initially shunning his wife, selling the house his family had owned in the center of the town square for generations, a tall, baby blue house, one of the prettiest and most expensive ones that lined the square, and using the money to build his own house on a private hill. It took years for the town to fully embrace Celia, even longer for some of the older folk who disapproved of outsiders, but eventually, she won everyone over with her gentle, kind nature, and warm temperament.

Jorge Messi came from an old, prestigious family of money, but had chosen to learn a trade to make his own income, despite his parent’s threats and protests that a man of the upper class had no need to work. The tall, thin houses in the town square crammed and shoved against each other, barely a space between each property to breathe. Gossip spread quickly here, but stopped at the edge of the square where the less wealthy classes began and frivolity ended, where Jorge would later escape to with his wife.

Down the lane from the big white house, a seven-minute walk away, lived Antonella, the daughter of a maid and a banker who would grow up to be an in-house cook for many of the wealthier families who lived in the pastel-colored houses in the town square. From a young age, Antonella cooked for Leo’s family while her mother cleaned the house. Sometimes, she would come out back and sit on the steps, ribbon pulling her hair back, watching with a glowing gaze as Leo brushed his dark bangs out of his eyes and kicked the ball against the brick.

For a while, Leo thought he was in love with Antonella, honeyed smile, peach blush cheeks, and the summer Leo turned seventeen, he might have been, watching the water glisten in droplets against her olive skin, the sun shining against her dark, chestnut hair, kissing her soft lips in the moonlight. But, Leo was young, and free, and had suddenly decided on plans to move out of the little rocky village by the sea with the cobblestone square and sweetened salty air, and pursue a professional football career instead of taking over his father’s profession.

And for a moment, however fleeting, Leo had a dream, a hope.

But, after Leo’s mom died, something prevented him from leaving. She was young, still had color in her cheeks and a song in her throat, but she was sick, and as the fog cleared the morning of the funeral, Leo didn’t talk about the big city or the lit stadiums with his dad ever again.

Months built up as Leo’s eighteenth birthday loomed, and the older ladies, ten years past their prime, would sit in the shade of the hot town square at midday as Leo set up his father’s daily catch in the stand in the corner as always, and make crooked, unwanted conversation, that Leo was a nice, steady young lad and that it was about time that he find someone to settle down with. And, as always, they would finish their cutting remarks with, “you should marry the cook,” but time passed and Leo never did and there was a time when Antonella waited for Leo to ask; she was swept away by another, but still, she cooked for Leo and his father.

It was a few years later when Jorge took the big navy and burgundy fishing boat out onto the water, late in the afternoon when the sky was clear and new, bright and sensuous and alluring, yet the air stood still, cool and dangerous. Leo could feel the storm in his bones; he could sense the rain and the thunder and the wind that would crack his father’s mast in half and rip the wood from its supports before it even happened. Everyone at the docks saw only temperate skies and a light breeze, and everyone in town raved happily about the sudden cold front, thinking nothing of what would undoubtedly come with it. And even when Leo had pleaded forlornly, “No, Papi, it looks like rain. Take her out early tomorrow instead,” Jorge had stared at him emptily, aged by years of drinking his loneliness away to the point that his eyes no longer shone with the light of the sea and were vacant and hollow as they looked at Leo, a lighthouse whose light had left; he could no longer see his wife in his son’s deep, brown eyes that once resembled hers.

Leo remembers the storm vividly, how quickly it rolled in from the horizon, the black sky and coarse rain, pelting against the windows reaching out to the sea. He remembers standing atop the hill, the hill his father had once chosen to shield his wife from the glares of their neighbors and friends, as the wind built up to burst like a balloon upon the shore, watching as the families on the beach gathered up their umbrellas frantically, and scattered for cover. He remembers the fear in his heart, the dark, echoingly empty house as his father didn’t return that night. Or the next night. Or the next.

Pieces of his father’s boat, _Maria_ , washed up on the shore on the fourth day, but no body was ever recovered. It was assumed that the boat was smashed on the rocks as many had done before. The same rocks that Leo played on as a child, the same ones that Celia believed held something dangerous within.

Leo felt it deep in his gut that the day his father took the boat, Jorge had known it would storm, that he went out into the raging, wine-colored sea anyway, and that he knew that he’d never return to Leo. In the end, broken by years of loneliness and heartache, he had chosen Celia over Leo.

 

 

And so, fisherman by trade, every morning except Sunday, as his father had done for years, Leo rises before the sun, before the ships even leave harbor and set their sails, in the cool dusk, to sit in the pale sand at the empty end of the beach that rarely sees many, to fish with his pole dug into the loose sand, line drifting out to sea. In the six years since his father passed, the gossip has spread to Leo’s ears that the fish out at sea taste better than the ones caught from the beach, but there’s a part of Leo that never wishes to fish in a boat, the image of the destroyed _Maria_ in pieces on the wet sand flashing in the back of his mind.

He catches the same big, blue gray fish that his father used to catch, buckets full before the sun climbs too high in the sky and burns Leo’s fair skin, the same color as his mother’s, cheeks and ears and the tip of his nose the color of the fiery pink sunset, and with blister-covered hands, carries his daily catch into the town square to the stand in the corner to sell to the people who know him all by name and watched him grow up or had grown up with him. In the afternoon, the ladies come to the town square in their pretty colored dresses and brightly adorned hats and flowry perfumes to stand around blushing in the heat and waving their fans, flirting with all the boys tanned by the sunny docks. And each afternoon, Leo watches them quietly from his spot in the shade with his fish on ice.

When the fish are all bought, which never takes too long, for everyone in town always needs fish, he walks up the rocky hill that he’s always walked up, these days with less vigor, as his ambition and excitement has dwindled since his childhood, to his parents’ large, white house overlooking the sea.

On the calm days when the waves lap against the rocks below, he sits still and paints through the tall windows with soft brush strokes, scenes of the water and the sky and the sun and the flowers in his mother’s flowerbox that he’d never share with another soul, not even Antonella who comes by three times a day to make sure Leo eats, making him his meals as always, hiding the canvases conspicuously leaned up against the wall.

Some nights, when the rain batters the little coastal town of the eternal summer, Leo sits at the kitchen counter in his big empty house and drinks enough to let himself forget for a little while. To forget the way his mother’s voice carried out the window into the little backyard where her garden smelled like rosemary and ripe tomatoes. To forget the way his dad cheered just as loud for him when he scored on the painted rectangle in the backyard as when he scored in the football games at school. To forget the way that Antonella used to smile at him with so much joy and life and how she smiles at him now with so much sadness and pity and disappointment. To forget the football in the hall closet that he hasn’t touched in years since his mom died and the peeling white paint on the brick wall. And the next morning, if Antonella comes in early, just after sunrise, she makes breakfast for Leo, who always refuses to eat when he’s hungover, and sets him on his way, because he had slept through the morning hours prime for fishing, and would have to stay late when the sun is high and hot in the sky. The mothers in the square always are expecting their fish, as is the rest of the town, and on these days, Leo feels the weight of Verano Eterno pressing down into the soft earth, the rhythm of the daily routine and the always-too-familiar faces tearing into the flesh of his shoulders.


	2. A White Truck

One day, in early spring, something out of the ordinary happens. In this little Spanish town that juts into the Atlantic Ocean, no one ever leaves and no one new ever arrives. Tradition runs deep in this place, and the nouveau is frowned upon greatly, especially by the older members of the village. Wealth distribution can be traced like a vein back to the heart; if you aren’t born into a family with generations of money, then you’ll never be. The rich intermarry with the rich, the same families controlling the same plots of land, with the town square town houses taking precedence over the larger, but less eloquent houses of the working class families outside of the town center and spreading out towards the cliffs.

On this particular Monday morning, Leo is battling a particularly vicious hangover, vision blurry and dense, head reeling. He’s woken up by the sound of the front door slamming shut.

“Leooooooo!” Antonella calls out, her voice loud and light, dancing through the vacant halls of the house as always.

Leo stares at the ceiling, attempting to blink his vision straight. The early morning sun bleeds through the drawn curtains, draping across the far wall like an elegant robe of gold. It has to be at least 8. He kicked off the sheets last night in his sleep in a sweaty, restless huff. Additionally, his shirt and pants are missing, which is a great way to start the day.

“Leo, I know you’re awake!” Antonella cracks from downstairs. The sound of bottles clinking as Antonella sweeps them into the trash has Leo cringing and rolling over in bed. The mattress creaks. His face is hot, no doubt flushed, hair sticking to his forehead.

Tingling tendrils of nausea curl in his stomach like it’s on a spin cycle and he presses down the urge to empty his stomach down the side of the bed. He lies still for a few moments, flicking his eyes back and forth across the cream ceiling. Focusing his breathing, he can hear the sound of waves crashing on rocks and seagulls echoing at each other. The walls of Leo’s rooms are bare. He threw out all the photos in his room of his parents years ago in an emotional fit of suppressed rage because he couldn’t bear to look at them. Now, Leo really fucking wishes that he wasn’t such a brat as a teenager and kept them because mornings like these, if seeing his mom’s smile once more could haul him out of bed, he’d take it in a heartbeat.

Antonella is ruthless, yelling out once more, “Don’t _make_ me come up there!”

Leo groans, sitting up. The warmth of the sun through the window presses up against Leo’s body like the heat of another, but dissipates when Leo slumps and stands, shuffling out of the rays and over to the dresser to tug on a pair of shorts and a sun-bleached t-shirt, delicate against his frame.

The wooden floorboards are well-worn and familiar as Leo clumsily descends the staircase, creak by creak, malleable beneath his feet. Antonella sits at the counter, cracking eggs into a bowl, facial expression unamused, but understanding. Beneath the surface, Leo can see her pity towards him, even with his eyes closed. She really is beautiful, Leo thinks, as he slips onto a stool diagonally facing her. Her hair is drawn back into a loose ponytail, hazel bangs sweeping across her brow as she works, lips pink and drawn into a thin line of concentration, eyes soft and warm as Leo has always known them to be. Her movements are gentle and simple as she works, whisking the eggs wordlessly, pouring them into the hot pan without glancing up to check on the state Leo is in. It must be hard for her, Leo ponders, putting his head down on the counter like a tired, old dog, for her to see him like this, the boy she once loved and probably still does, and try to take care of him in this low state, unable to keep Leo’s head above water all the time, disappointed when he dunks his head under and has to help him up for air afterwards. Sometimes, after he finished his homework and she finished work in town, he’d take her down to the water and they’d sit, just staring at the ocean until the stars began to dot the sky. Then they’d waste half the night just talking and staring into the darkness like they’d be young forever, like they’d be in love forever.

Antonella flips the omelet. It sizzles angrily. She flicks off the knob on the stove. Everything sounds so _loud._

Leo wants to ask her if she’s happy, if she likes her life, if Marco is a good husband to her. He doesn’t, just buries his head further beneath his folded arms and avoids the thoughts.

“There’s a truck next door,” Antonella says through the silence. Her voice is tart and staticky. Leo flicks his eyes up to stare at her. She plates his breakfast and puts it down in front of him, turning away to face the sink and tend to the dishes, which she doesn’t have to wash, but always does anyway.

The house next door belongs to some close friends of Leo’s parents who have a son two years older than Leo. It’s a mansion, big and yellow and obnoxious, four stories with two balconies and a massive, arrogant fountain out front, and located on the other side of the cliff, but can still be seen through the thick shrubs put in place for privacy purposes from Leo’s window. Leo doesn’t say it, but he recalled seeing the large, white truck pull up late last night through the darkness of the storm. It’s mildly intriguing and no doubt the town is already in an uproar threatening to burn down the place, but Leo couldn’t care less. He hasn’t felt much a part of the community lately anyway.

Antonella cleans the dishes silently and doesn’t chide Leo about not eating today, nor does she discuss the bottles all over the counter when she came in. After fifteen minutes, she hands Leo his bagged lunch, and shoos him out the door with a forced neutrality that pulls at Leo’s heart a bit.

Leo spends the better part of the morning squinting through the sunlight and waiting for his line to pull taut. The beach is empty except for an old couple on a walk. They nod and smile and ask Leo if he’s caught anything. Leo plasters a smile on his cheeks and forces himself to appear cheery and delighted by the small talk. He can’t remember their names, but he knows that they have a daughter who works for the seamstress in town and is visibly pregnant but has no husband. He doesn’t bring anything up about that though. As the sun beats down, Leo can feel his body give into the sweltering heat, tired and broken down. He lies back in the sand, covering his eyes with his forearm lazily, ignoring the sound of the line pulling. It could snap for all he cares. Sweat clings to his skin underneath his shirt and he wishes he were in the shade at the corner square, almost finished with his rounds instead of burning alive on this hell beach.

Delirious in his own exhaustion, Leo’s mind wanders back to the house of his parents’ friends. He remembers their son; he worked down at the docks with the other guys, even though his parents were rich enough that he didn’t have to work a day in his life. They were the wealthiest family in the village and always threw these lavish parties that Leo never went to, even though his parents always went.

The sound of the line snapping tears Leo out of his headspace.

 _“Fuck,”_ Leo hisses, watching as the clear line disappears into the ocean. He’s lucky the rod didn’t break.

After Leo restrings the rod, he doesn’t catch much. It’s almost 3 PM and nothing but bait is biting, so he packs up his gear and drags himself up the dirt road and into town.

 

***

 

As predicted, the only thing anybody in town will talk about is the _mysterious_ moving van parked up the hill. Everybody takes it personally in their own way, as if the newcomer is looking to settle into _their_ house next in order to set it on fire. Leo listens with a blasé indifference, eyes glazed as Mrs. Suarez complains about her fear that the new tenant will open a restaurant right next to her little corner café and drive her out of business as a response to Leo’s question of how she would like her Bream wrapped. Thankfully Leo didn’t catch nearly half of what he normally does and he’s in and out of the marketplace within an hour, marching up the dirt road to the house on top of the cliff.

He drops his rods, bait boxes, and buckets outside the house, telling himself that he’s not interested in who’s going to be his new neighbor. The silence of the house settles underneath Leo’s skin immediately. The place feels too big without anyone else to live in it with him. Antonella already came by to make dinner, probably an hour ago, from the way that the dishes have already dried where they sit on the counter, afternoon sunlight glinting dimly, almost resignedly off their surfaces.

_Food is in fridge._

_-Antonella_

Leo glances down at the note, eyes tracing her curved handwriting, before throwing it in the trash. He shouldn’t keep her notes. It might look like sentimentality.

It’s a long time before Leo goes upstairs, performing meaningless tasks downstairs in order to distract himself from rushing up to the window in his room and stalk whomever it is that decided to be his neighbor. It’s dark outside, but the yellow mansion is lit up like Christmas. The white moving van is still parked out front, but there’s nothing else, no cars or helicopters or private jets. Leo tries to picture the family that used to live there. He never went out of his way to remember their names, as they seemed quiet arrogant and self-absorbed people. The son was quite handsome, skin smooth and tan from working at the docks, eyes a deep brown that matched his hair, which he always combed to the side. The ladies would wait for him to come into town after work, wearing their best, most expensive dresses, hair styled and combed, faces all dolled up just to catch his attention. They spoke in fake, high voices, giggling and gushing, dropping handkerchiefs so he would pick it up for them. It was all very funny to watch. Leo had seen him working on his father’s gold and white leisure boat before, rippling back and shoulder muscles flexing and releasing as he pulled the thick strings and let loose the sails to billow grandly in the ocean breeze. Leo can remember the scene so vividly in his head, the sheen layer of sweat glistening on his skin in the sunlight. Every now and then, as Leo passed by the docks on his way into town, he would watch him with a curious fascination. Leo himself couldn’t work on the docks like the other boys, he’d burn too badly, so his mother persuaded him to spend more time fishing in the early morning than helping out the docking crews. Leo had never talked to this boy, had rarely made eye contact with him even, and one day, he disappeared, left town around the age of 19, with rumors the he was recruited to play professional football. All the girls in town were _devastated_ , as the most eligible boy toy vanished into thin air, but Leo had been simply amazed that this boy had managed to escape this town, had found a way out using the sport he loved. It planted a subtle seed in seventeen-year-old Leo’s mind, that maybe he too could climb the cliffs and slip out onto the other side, only to have his dreams shattered and forgotten.


	3. Nostalgia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is more mopey build-up of Leo's monotone life :// I know I want Cris to pop up already too!!! But patience please!!! I'll update again super soon I promise ;)

Leo peers through the concentrated gray morning fog, fingers thumbing against the wood of the rod absentmindedly. The orange sun crests over what feels like the edge of the world, where the sea drops off and the earth ceases to exist. The beach is calm at 5:00 AM, the sunrise reminding Leo that light comes after darkness. He drags a hand through his dark hair, sleep lingering in his dazed thoughts. The moving van was gone this morning, not that Leo checked or anything. He just happened to be at his window observing his surroundings when he noticed the lack of a big white truck out front of the big yellow mansion. It would be unusual to have not noticed. At least that’s what Leo tells himself as his eyes scan the horizon of the sea slowly coming to life, current pulling the subdued morning waters to kiss the shore again and again and again.

It’s the silent serenity of these mornings that makes Leo miss his dad most, their soft, mumbled conversations when both were too tired and too groggy to form coherent sentences, the pride his father openly expressed towards him when he brought in a big catch. It made fishing fun and feel less like something he had to do to earn money than anything else.

Leo doesn’t like to admit that he’s lonely. He knows what he feels, he just doesn’t like to acknowledge it as _that._ It feels so weak and pathetic, stirring up something from his childhood like being picked last in gym class because they thought that the fact that he was smaller than most of the other kids meant he was less athletic or less capable or whatever or when his mom didn’t want him to work at the docks because she didn’t want him to get hurt (“The other boys are just so much… bigger than you… it would be harder for you to keep up is all… why don’t you try fishing instead?”). There are nights when Leo lies in bed, craving another body next to his, yearning for some source of heat, some source of passion and lust and _feeling_ to charge his nights, but the desires normally pass and most of the time all that’s left is the sweat cooling on his skin and the translucent stickiness drying against his stomach, a vague sense of embarrassment for letting himself feel anything at all. He remembers that Antonella could’ve filled the spot once, that she could’ve been the one sharing his bed, but as the weeks and months pass, Leo finds it harder and harder to picture her by his side, waking up to her every morning. There’s always the constant gnawing fear lurking the back of his subconscious that maybe he was never meant for anybody, that maybe he’ll never find anybody at all—or worse—maybe he’ll never _want_ anybody at all.

The sleepy tide laps at the surface of the shore. A few wispy, periwinkle clouds drift across the still-dark sky. The day hasn’t yet to begin, but Leo’s work is nearly finished, buckets full, hands calloused, forearms sore, as he baits his final hook and casts the line out to the unforgiving sea.

 

***

 

Leo stares at Ms. Irina Shayk’s mouth as she talks. She’s wearing a yellow, flowy dress, the fabric on top thinner than the silk underneath. A peach sun hat shades her face even though she’s already standing in the shade and probably won’t be going in the sun any time soon. Her olive skin has never seen a day of sunburns in her life. She bites her plump bottom lip in thought, batting her eyelashes. Her nails are painted a seductive red, and she’s waving her hands around motioning things to emphasize her words. But, Leo’s not actually listening. Every day, she orders the same thing, but every day, she pretends like she’s going to pick something different. Her dark hair is wrapped up in a tight braid that drapes down her back and her piercing denim-blue eyes are everywhere but on the fish in front of her, like she’s repulsed that they’re even in her presence. Leo blinks for the first time in minutes, gazing boredly off to the side. There are a few little girls playing in the fountain in the center of the square. They screech and splash each other, drenching their hems and frocks. Four pairs of black Mary Janes sit in a neat little row just outside the cement of the fountain. Leo smiles a bit out of the corner of his mouth, thinking to himself what a nice painting the scene would make. The lighting is just right, sun peaking over the short buildings that shade the courtyard, and the atmosphere is playful, but melancholy. If only he had his brushes he could…

“I’ll just take the two mackerel,” Ms. Shayk interrupts Leo’s daydream and Leo looks at her with a forced interest to hide his petulance that she dragged him through yet another conversation of counterfeit self-doubt.

“Will that be all?” Leo asks out of habit, dumbly so, because the woman before him, not much older than Leo, starts off again on a painfully obnoxious self-absorbed tangent.

“Actually, do you have any cod? What does it taste like? Is it more of a bitter—,” and that’s when Leo chooses to tune her out.

A group of young boys pass a football in a circle in between the fruit stands. They’re about ten or eleven years old, dark hair made lighter from the salty sea and blinding sun, tips of the ears burnt, arms and legs an even, milk chocolate tan. When he was younger, Leo would spend hours with Ney, running down the dirt roads, chasing the other with the ball, coming home with cuts and scratches on his legs from crawling in the thorny bushes lining the path when the ball traveled off course. Neymar now works down on one of the barter boats. The hours are terrible and Leo rarely sees him anymore. He settled down a few years ago with a girl and has a son of his own. Leo misses him. He misses talking to him about football and girls and about how much he misses his dad.

“No, yeah, I’ll just take the mackerel,” Ms. Shayk says with a dumb, bright smile. Leo stares at her blandly. She’s young and gorgeous and her dad owns half of the boats on the dock, but she’s, nicely put, not the nicest kid on the playground. She fell in love years ago with the handsome boy who left town, the one who worked on his dad’s gold and white boat and picked up all the lacy handkerchiefs of all the pretty girls, but when he disappeared and left her behind, she refused to marry, vowing that one day he’d return to her, that he loved her too much to abandon her. She had many suitors, many who adored her, but her heart was cold and she refused to accept any of them.

Leo hands Irina her fish and takes the bills she hands him without even counting it. She smiles and floats away, head high, shoulders back, elegant arms swaying blithely as she moves. She reminds Leo almost of a siren, a beautiful, charismatic, deceptive serpent, who lures men to their deaths.

Leo leans back in his chair, rubbing his face tiredly. His lips are dry and chapped and he hasn’t eaten the lunch Antonella packed him (to be quite honest, he’s not planning on eating it). Hunger gnaws at his stomach, but he ignores it. The sky is a pale, almost misty blue, and from under his shaded stand cover, Leo peers at it, brown eyes getting lost in the endless oasis, absorbing the vastness of the sea’s opposite. The afternoon rolls on slowly, hotly, as people come and go, picking up the shopping for that night’s dinner, making casual conversation with Leo as they pass.

Every now and then, an old friend of his parents’ stops by, smiling and placing their orders, the same distant, sad expression hidden behind their weary eyes, a mix of pity and worry for Leo, that he is unhappy, that he is lonely, that he will always be this way. And Leo is used to it, he’s seen it for years, but that doesn’t make him loathe them for it any less.

As he climbs the dirt path to the hill, Leo forgets all about the boisterous yellow mansion and the white truck. He focuses on the condescending old people and Irina’s annoying conceit and Neymar working at the docks. It digs into a raw part of Leo, a piece of him that he hadn’t thought about in a while because he’d been to busy obsessing over the emptiness in his heart to care about anyone around him. It makes it all more shocking when Leo hears a commotion from beyond the brush. He drops his gear by the side door and curls around back beyond the forlorn, white house, peeking coyly through the thicket.

Leo remembers that the people who lived in the house before had been very wealthy, the only family in town to have servants. Leo remembers the white and gold uniforms that the butlers and gardeners and house servants wore; he remembers making fun of them with Piqué and Suarez. “Los Blancos! Los Merengues! They look ridiculous!” As children, they would duck under the greenery that separated the two properties and sit in the shade and watch the gardeners manicure the lawn and clean the windows, joking about playing in the fountain out front. But now, as Leo slips through the brush, spying on the yellow house once more, he is almost shocked to see the white and gold uniforms after all these years. There must be at least thirty of them, directing the men in the _multiple_ moving trucks heaving fancy furniture through the front door and shouting orders out across the lawn to an army of gardeners tending to the white roses out front that Leo swears weren’t there yesterday. Not that Leo noticed or anything.

Trailing back to the house, Leo wonders if he’ll like his new neighbor[s], if he’ll finally be able to settle into the town and begin to heal after so many years of being alone on the hill.

Through the haze of his memory he can vaguely make out the family across the thicket. The father was tall, a dark beard and dark, solemn eyes. He was very quiet and very serious. The mother was beautiful and she knew it, walking with a confident swagger that left all the other men gawking. Leo always heard the ladies in town gossiping that she slept around, that they don’t trust their own husbands around her because she could sweet talk them into infidelity. Leo knew never to trust the ladies’ gossip, but still it made him curious. The family owned a few of the townhouses on the square, a pink one and a cream one and a navy blue one. When their son left town, the parents moved out of the yellow mansion, and Leo assumed they moved into one of their spares, but he hasn’t seen or heard about them in years.

Tiptoeing through the back entrance, Leo gingerly opens all the first floor windows to let the salty breeze in and drain the humidity of the day from the inside out. The rustle of the sea grass and the splash of surf on rocks fills the quiet kitchen. Leo sits at the counter with his dinner, quietly eating, eyes locked on the wood of the floor. The kitchen is plainly decorated. A small, professional painting of the docks at dusk and a framed photo of Leo as a child, missing one of his front teeth, cheeks sunburnt, eyes alight with the excitement of youth, hair tousled wild and messy, holding a soccer ball under his arm proudly, are the only two items that adorn the ivory walls. A few of his mother’s attempts at handmade pottery rest on shelves above the cabinets: oddly shaped ceramic bowls, mugs that lean, cups with uneven sides, and most of all, Leo’s favorite, a small, red tea pot with a crooked spout and a curved handle. Leo’s mother was never the best artist, most everything she made turned out looking inadvertently mangled and misshapen, and when her health declined, she took more joy in watching Leo paint than molding clay. The kitchen is more open than it used to be after Leo got rid of the wooden dinner table and the three chairs around it; he couldn’t look at the empty space without picturing how it used to be. Aside from that, Leo hasn’t touched anything else, the house remaining almost the same since Celia died almost ten years ago. He hasn’t seen the inside of his parents’ room in years, too afraid to remind himself that they ever existed, that they once woke up every morning and saw the same sun and sky that Leo still sees every day.

He clears his dishes in the sink as the sun sinks below the cliff, a burning amber orb, searing streaks of colors against a cool sky, shedding a kaleidoscope of dying light through Leo’s kitchen window, drenching life into the weary kitchen. He trudges down the gloomy halls to the staircase, pausing at the hall closet, recalling a memory from his murky, hazy teenage years.

He was on the beach with Mascherano and Claudio and Ney and Piqué, running over plays and fooling around with the ball like they had all afternoon. Ney kept flipping the ball into the ocean and dragging Leo in to go get it. The clear water flickered under the late afternoon sun. It felt as though Leo could stay this happy forever, that he could always come home from school and play pick up with the guys, that Antonella would always be waiting for him in the evening to walk down to their spot by the rocks and point out the boats with their magnificent, brightly-colored sails, and that he’d never have to worry about the future. The memory is so pure, so real, so fantastic, yet so far from reach. Blinking to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting, Leo stares at the door of the hall closet, twisting the knob to pull it open. On the floor in the right corner sits the ball, a little deflated, a little faded, but still good. Carefully as if it’s made of sand and might slip through his fingers, Leo picks it up in his hands, relishing in the feel of the hexagon stitches, of the smooth surface, frowning at the tattered pieces and rips across the outside. He bites his lip, as if deciding whether he should put it back and lock the closet and never open it again or give into the urge to slip out the side door and stand face to face with the peeling paint rectangle on the crumbling brick wall. Instead, he rolls it down the hall, letting it hit the front door and find a home on the floor of the foyer. Turning swiftly on his heel, Leo begins up the stairs, but not before catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror to the left of the closet.

He looks less tired than he feels, which he guesses it a good thing. The ever-present sunburns on his cheeks have begun to peel and fade in the slightest, revealing the raw, fleshy paleness beneath. In his eyes, he sees the usual sadness, the usual vacancy that he’s grown accustom to. He grins a bit to his reflection, revealing white, mostly straight teeth except for his uneven front two, tongue peeking from underneath. His eyes crinkle at the edges and two dimples permeate his cheeks. He smirks wider then, fascinated with himself, gaze baring deep into dark eyes, glaring at his unkempt hair, a little longer than usual, and sticking out at the top from a day of sweating in the heat. For a moment, he feels like he might laugh, like he’s genuinely surprised to see himself staring back at him, fascinated by his figure and form. And then the smile fades and the discontent returns to his features, hollowing his eyes, lips quirked into a frown, expression blank. It’s not much, but for a moment, Leo could almost grasp the warm aura of the joy fluttering in his chest, but the feeling flees just as quickly as it came, leaving Leo to climb the stairs coldly, trapped in his own thoughts.


	4. To Meet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AH! so so sorry I took forever to update this! But, I can't just leave this thing unfinished can I ;) ?

In the days following, little activity takes place in the house over. The people at the square grow impatient, demanding if anyone will ever move in. Leo simply listens unobtrusively from his corner stand with empty, mildly interested eyes. The women come by the stand in clusters, complain about the heat and the house, pat his cheeks, buy their fish, and leave. In the mornings and sometimes the afternoons, Antonella comes by, speaking little to him as of recently, making his meals, and leaving. The routine continues in its rigid cycle as always, except for a slight hump in the ordinary.

Unconsciously, after trekking up the hill in the mid-afternoon glow, Leo finds himself changing out of his sweat-soaked day clothes and into shorts and a t-shirt, which hangs loosely off his thinner frame, and grabbing the football by the door, creeping through the untamed underbrush that lines the side of the house and leads to the small backyard. He spends the later hours until dark kicking the battered ball against the vine-covered brick, running and ducking and dodging through the bushes, the smell of his mother’s herb garden permeating the air. With the wind gripping hold of his clothes clinging to his body, hair pushed back as he runs, Leo regains his legs, the feel of the ball at his feet, the excitement pumping through his veins, the scream of his lungs begging for oxygen. It’s exhilarating, the way he feels brand new, muscles invigorated by the movements, heart elevated by the sport he had forgotten how much he loved. His shoes slap the dust like distant drumbeats, impact reverberating through his soles, gaspy breaths short and harsh through his nose and barely parted lips, the satisfying thump of the tattered ball against the cement wall.

It’s a cool Thursday afternoon, and after working his shift in town, Leo slips into the little toyshop on the corner to buy a new football, only because the current one isn’t in the best shape it could be in, and Leo doesn’t want to _pop_ it.

Fábio Coentrão, a boy who Leo used to play with in high school, mans the cash register, and eyes Leo with a slight interest. Leo hasn’t seen Fábio for a while, but he hasn’t grown since high school, or changed much in the structure of his face. His hair is still blond at the ends from the sun, still has the faint scar on his cheek from when he slipped on the rocks and smacked his face on the sharp edge of the boulder gracelessly. Leo still remembers the sound he made as he fell, the yelp pressed from Fábio’s lungs and the thwack of skin against something harder, more unforgiving.

Fábio doesn’t say much, just asks Leo how fishing is going, if he’s doing well. Leo replies tersely, giving a weak, thin smile, before grabbing the ball, light blue and white patterned, and leaving the store, wondering if anyone in town knows more about him than the fact that he provides them with fish.

By the time Leo returns to the white house on the hill, it’s pitch dark, white specks dotting the atmosphere. It’s just Leo and the stars and the hush of the sea, the sound of his feet against the path. But, as he approaches the front door, face to face with the thinning paint on the frame, he hears cheering, loud rowdy whistling, echoing off the cliffs and up to the blackened sky, carried by the wind. The shouting jars the little hill, puts it off balance; it’s coming from the house next door. Leo tells himself he doesn’t _care_ , that things have been happening for days and that this is just another big escapade that will end in nothing. But, he can’t will himself to wrap his fingers around the doorknob, let himself inside, and ignore the situation. Because, what if. Leo tilts his head back to the stars, cursing himself, his feeble curiosity, as he steps of the front porch and slips alongside the house to the thicket, peering through the leaves at the scene across the way.

The house is completely lit up, brightness snaking all the way up from the bottom of the driveway, around the fountain, and inside the yellow monster itself. Leo can’t see the stars now, too blinded by the flood of man-made brilliance. The servants in their white uniforms line the steps, clapping and yelling and cheering. Leo moves a bit further out in the open to see what they’re cheering about, as his vision is limited by the foliage. He stumbles a bit over the network of roots crawling over each other at his feet and finds himself completely exposed, staring down a sleek, black limousine coming to a stop in front of the yellow mansion. His brown eyes lock on the car, time slipping by in rivulets of anticipation, as a figure emerges from the rear door, tall and built and clad in an impeccably tailored suit. Leo can only see him from the back, taking in his gelled and combed hair and the broad expanse of his shoulders tight against the fabric of the suit.

Leo is suddenly hyper-aware of his own heartbeat, of the way his chest rises and falls underneath his shirt. The breeze caresses over his skin and through his hair, and he moves, almost unconsciously, further from the brush and more into the open to try to get a glimpse of the man’s face.

The man is embracing the head servant, making large, grand gestures with his arms as he looks at the house with clear satisfaction, turning then to the cliffs. The man is grinning broadly, teeth bright and picturesque against the tan of his skin. His profile is handsome, Leo thinks to himself.

But, his breath stops sharp in his throat as the man turns once more, this time to face the white house, the thicket, and most alarmingly, Leo. Leo, who is standing and staring at this young man, still holding his newly-purchased football dumbly in his hands, stock still, legs fused into the cooling earth, even as the other man tilts his head towards the head butler, gesturing towards Leo, exchanging a few words, and begins to stride over to Leo with long, confident steps. And Leo can _feel_ his face heating up, the pink spreading first from his ears to his cheeks, hot underneath the surface. Because there the young man stands, not five feet away, shedding the most exuberant grin, brown eyes gleaming, and he’s _gorgeous_. He’s the most handsome person Leo has ever seen, and he sick to his stomach because he’s seen that grin before, down at the docks, by the gold and white leisure boats and in the town square, conversing with the ladies making them swoon and swill. He looks as though he’s made of marble, jawline cut from diamond. His lips are a light pink and his hair is a deep coffee brown, parted and cut and styled with gel, and Leo has the frightening, irritating urge to _touch it._ But, what is most alluring are the man’s eyes, focused and raw and _dangerous_ , examining Leo fondly. The way he stands is so concrete, so solid, as though no force could shake him over, hands tucked casually in the soft silk of his suit pockets. His form is perfectly shaped, like some kind of model for how the ideal human should look, tall—taller than Leo by a handful of inches—shoulders filling out the material, legs snug and straining against the soft of the cloth.

“Hey,” the man speaks, voice smooth and warm and heavy, cutting through the air, “I’m Cristiano.” And Leo’s just staring at him, at the barest hint of a collarbone poking out beneath the unbuttoned cotton of his dress shirt, at the way his lips move around the words. Leo doesn’t say anything—he doesn’t trust himself to say anything that makes any actual sense. His fingers hold the ball tighter, palms suddenly sweaty against the sewn leather exterior.

The man doesn’t seem perturbed by the silence, only a bit amused. He continues, as though he doesn’t mind that he’s having a conversation essentially with himself, “I just moved into that house.” He gestures behind to the yellow mansion briefly, barely taking his eyes from Leo for a moment. Leo’s mouth is dry. His knees could buckle. He manages a nod, a weak, automatic, nod. He’s always been shy, but the moment exposes every weakness he’s been burying for twenty some odd years. The waves crashing fills the void. Leo licks his lips, catching how Cristiano’s eyes flicker down slightly for a moment at the movement, heat rising higher in Leo’s chest, embarrassingly. In his ears, his heart beats, pulsing so loudly over the discomfort of the situation. He remembers how strong Cristiano’s hands used to be down at the docks, pulling tight at the thick white ropes, forearms straining with exertion, perspiration glimmering against his smooth skin.

“So, you play football?” Cristiano says easily, charismatically.

“No,” Leo blurts out, out of pure habit, of being defensive for so long, and he could practically hurl himself off the cliffs.

Cristiano’s smile widens, eyes lidding a bit.

“So,” Cristiano pauses.

“Leo,” Leo fills in, so it might assuage some of the tension if he actually gave himself an identity.

It just makes the air thinner when Cristiano says his name, beautifully forming it, “Leo,” his smile presses the slightest dimples into his cheeks, “Why do you have a football then?”

“I—uh,” Leo stutters against the barrier that words have become. The other man makes a noise behind his teeth, the stifling of a laugh.

Cristiano’s eyes are gleaming. They remind Leo of the stars. “Can I have it then, if you aren’t going to use it? I’m a big football fan,” Cristiano toys, but Leo is still reeling, can’t even think properly.

“What? No,” Leo quips, and Cristiano laughs, radiant and curling from his throat devilishly. And if Leo’s cheeks were pink before, now they’re a bright red, enough to light up the whole brush brighter than Cristiano’s house.

“I’m just kidding. It was good to meet you, Leo,” Cristiano brightens, outstretching a hand, which Leo shakes automatically, feeling the soft warmth tingling against his palm.

And as quickly as Cristiano appeared, he’s striding back towards the yellow house, away from Leo, and vanishing through the front doors past the servants twittering about.

Leo feels as though he’s been struck by lightning, mind dizzy, like he’d just downed a bottle of wine. His thoughts are muddled, confused by Cristiano and his voice and his hair and his eyes. The night breeze sweeps the hill, and something about the whole interaction feels like a world that Leo knew when he was younger, watching an older boy down at the docks, tugging a hand through his sun-lightened dark locks. It was a time when Leo knew that he could go home from the docks where his mother and father waited for him in the kitchen, sun peaking in through the late evening windows. It was a world that was whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome and appreciated greatly!!!


	5. Sunday Sins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's just a quick update to keep things going!! Enjoy :))

The next day is a Sunday, a day of rest, and Leo shutters himself inside, away from the noise and the bustle of the house next door. Wind berates the house with its cadences, begging Leo to come forth, to take a glance at the man of lights (as Leo had come to refer to Cristiano in his own head to avoid using his actual name). Instead, Leo turns on his mother’s old record player and puts on some old songs that used to fill the house in summers when it was too hot to sleep and the night was alive with the strength of the female voices that Leo’s mother put her faith in.

Leo lays down on the hardwood floor by his bed then, staring at the ceiling, at the white rivulets there, light dancing in the morning, feeling his own breath, what it is to be alive. He feels the press of his skin to the cool of the floor, is intensely aware of his own body.

Lena Rodriguez’s voice echoes from the walls, telling Leo about the pain of men. And Leo feels her reassurance, grins to himself, and allows himself, if just for a moment, to remember the man of lights—Cristiano’s eyes gleaming with the soul of the universe, the energy of the sun. He emanated heat. There was something of promise in the way he spoke, those soft lips.

There’s a pause in Leo’s thoughts, deciding whether or not he should permit himself this escape, to delve further into danger. The house sways with Lena’s voice.

Cristiano’s silken strands of hair under his fingertips, his cologne filling his senses, what it would taste to press his lips to Cristiano’s skin…

And Leo shifts against the wood paneling, the familiar heat trapping and slipping under his clothes when he allows himself to feel it, to let his mind wander to ecstasy. Leo lids his eyes shut, a blindness to his own lust. A moment, he arches from the floor boards, spine craned towards the ceiling, cream skin bathed in the light of the weak morning praying for fulfilment. The cold of the house settles chills on his skin, little mountains of cool rising forth. And his hands wander, calloused and warm like the sand on the beach from the sun, under the rough of his cotton, sun-bleached shirt, to scrape against his ribs. He can feel Cristiano’s hands, he swears he can, broad and strong, slowly moving across his ribcage, the vulnerability there, maybe pressing a kiss or two to his pecs as he feels. Leo inhales shakily.

It’s been so long since these carnal desires has had a face or a name attached to them. Most of the time when Leo touches himself, he just imagines the things he likes, being pressed into the mattress, controlled a bit, words whispered into his neck, _“So good, Leo, so good.”_

But as Leo presses his erection to his stomach, gasping, shuttering at the sensation, he knows he only wants to be good for Cristiano, knows he can be.

He bites his lip, toying at his entrance with his finger, sinking the first in past the knuckle, shifting and playing back Cristiano’s voice in his thoughts, how it would feel to have Cristiano’s weight on top of him, pinning his arms, gazing into those oaken eyes promising what Cristiano would do to him, mischievous.

“Fuck,” Leo whimpers, rolling his hips to the air and grinding them down onto a second finger, craning his neck, exposing the long lines of muscle. He digs his heels into the cool of the wood floors. Cristiano’s hand around his cock, slowly at first, _“You like that?”_ sultry sweet, knowing just how to tear Leo apart, completely, grinning through his want. Leo uses his other fingers to suck down his moans, fucking his own mouth, the heat of Cristiano’s cock on his tongue, the taste of bitterness.

Leo shivers a moment, curling his fingers, searching for that spot, a little desperate, a little undone, sweat dotting his neck. Leo knows Cristiano would be rough, leaving bites by his collarbone, fucking hard and deep enough so Leo is crying out with each thrust. And Leo is so damn close, aching for release, wrapping his fingers around the throbbing, leaking head of his cock, when the front door downstairs opens and Antonella calls out above Lena Rodriguez, “Leo!” loud enough to shatter the walls. She turns off the record player and the house is eerily silent, a crime scene.

_“Shit,”_ Leo hisses in surprise, scrambling up from the ground, knees scuttling across the floor awkwardly, bumping his head on the birch side of his bed and tripping over to the window, still hard, still flushed, still turned-on past purity.

“I can _hear_ you, Leo! What are you doing up there?” Antonella shouts, beneath him by a floor, as though she could see up through the cracks in the floor.

He fumbles with his shorts in a heap by the dresser, dragging them up hurriedly past his thighs.

“Nothing!” Leo manages a reply, breathily catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror and he’s _trashed_. _Fuck. Shit. FUCK._ His hair is pulled and spiked, cheeks and skin flushed leading from his throat down. Spit and precome has dried at the corner of his mouth.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing! Do you need some help?” Antonella moves beneath Leo’s feet, as though she is migrating towards the staircase and Leo wipes at his mouth frantically and mattes down his hair. His eyes shout urgency as he watches his reflection.

“I’m fine! I’ll be down in a moment!” Leo opens the window to get the heat out.

“I don’t trust you, I’m coming up,” Antonella’s footsteps hit the creaking stair steps. And Leo panics, cursing his father’s choice to build the doors without locks as Antonella’s opening the door. Leo poses, standing with his back to her, looking out the window, hands braced against the sill dramatically.

“Hey,” Leo says evenly, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side, just enough.

“Good. You’re alive,” she says. Leo can tell she’s examining every inch of the room for something out of place, a clue, a culprit, another woman.

“Very,” Leo replies, mechanically, barely breathing.

She pauses a moment. Leo feels he’s caught. He wishes the record was still playing; he’s sure Antonella can hear his heartbeat thundering against his ribcage, threatening to climb out.

“It smells like sweat in here,” is what she says, turning to leave in almost a huff, a swirl of her curled black hair that used to drive boys crazy.

Leo collapses back against the sill, head lolling to rest against the frame, exhausted.

“I was just doing some pushups!” Leo yells suddenly to the open bedroom door, a frayed explanation.

“Whatever. Breakfast will be ready in ten,” Antonella descends the stairs.

 

 

***

 

Antonella blows on her coffee, steam rising from the ceramic. Leo knows she’s still watching his every move as he picks at his breakfast plate with lackluster. Any slight hint of out-of-the-ordinary behavior and she’s a guard dog. He’s changed his shirt and shorts to be sure she can’t smell the scent of faux-sex stuck slick to his skin. He’s embarrassed that he let himself get so carried away, with the idea of a man he’d just met the day before after all those years no less.

“I’ve heard news,” Antonella announces, bringing the cup to her lips, the contrast of white with the tart of her lipstick. Leo shovels his fork into his mouth so he doesn’t have to respond; Antonella knows the trick and rolls her eyes, every escape and escapade of Leo’s so he doesn’t have to directly ask, _“What’d you hear?”_

“About that big ugly mansion next door,” she baits.

“Oh?” Leo feigns innocence but his stomach clenches.

“You know the one. Hideous golden disaster,” she spoons sugar into her coffee and stirs. The grains disappear into the black.

“Haven’t seen it much,” Leo states blankly.

“Don’t tease, you know what I’m talking about,” she puts her cup down.

Leo says nothing, but Antonella is staring at him.

“Go on,” Leo coaxes, only because she won’t tell him if he doesn’t.

“Well, I heard that the man who bought it moved in yesterday, _finally_ ,” She’s excited, but tries to hide it, fingers laced around the mug.

“Took him long enough,” Leo makes conversation blandly.

“Mrs. Piqué said a man came into her shop early this morning and placed fifty-three fabric orders to be made into shirts for his master who arrived late last night. Fifty-three orders! How could anybody need that many shirts?” She throws her hands up like Leo’s mother used to do when she was talking to his father. Exasperated.

“If he has the money he can do whatever he wants with it,” Leo muses. He can’t exactly picture Cristiano being that kind of man. But then again, Leo doesn’t know Cristiano.

“If I had that kind of money I wouldn’t throw it away on shirts! I’d buy a big damn boat and get the hell away from this place!” She has that kind of faraway look in her eyes, a kind of mist that lingers there when she talks about the “what ifs”. She’s half smiling. Everyone knows the only way out of Verano Eterno is by boat or biplane; to delve or escape inland is only to find and be trapped by more of the same.

“Perhaps, mi Hermosa,” Leo says quietly, to get her attention, but not shatter her reverie, “The man is just trying to make a big sheet so he can hide his ugly yellow house under it.”

Antonella smiles, face aglow with the resilience of the late afternoon.

“Fifty-three orders,” she giggles, the sound of butterflies taking flight from honeysuckle buds and Leo smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always loved and appreciated :)))


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